[FPSPACE] New book on lunar resources

[DwayneDay]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Harrison <routier at tig.com.au>
Sent: Aug 16, 2004 6:40 PM

>Much as I admire many of your scholarly contributions, you have stepped into the
traffic without looking this time.

>Unless you are being deliberately disingenuous, your portrayal of the "Limits to
Growth" study by the The Club of Rome is simplistic & inaccurate.  They didn't

For those who remember the old Saturday Night Live, this debating tactic is known as the "Jane, you ignorant slut" retort...


>predict a miserable life by "say, 2004" - rather, they kept talking about the
year 2100, and "100 years on the future".

Actually, they made quite a few predictions that should have come true by 2004.  For instance, they made conservative predictions of no growth in consumption.  By these assumptions, by today we should be out of the following resources:  gold, lead, mercury, petroleum, silver, tin and zinc.  Then they made very extreme assumptions of exponential growth (i.e. doom and gloom), and by these assumptions, by 2005 (only a few months away now) we should be out of aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum (whatever the heck that is--maybe you cook with it?), natural gas, petroleum, silver, tin, tungsten and zinc.  Now I drove my car this afternoon, so I think that their prediction that we would be out of petroleum either by 1991 (pessimistic) or 2002 (optimistic prediction) is probably wrong.  And I just turned on my gas stove, so I think that their prediction that we would be out of natural gas by 1993 is also probably wrong.

But I did a little bit of additional checking.  Turns out that the US Geological Survey has a wonderful website with statistics for people who are obsessed with minerals (you know who you are--and you should seek professional help) and I looked a couple of them up.  The Limits to Growth study predicted that we would run out of aluminum, assuming (worst case) exponential growth by 2002.  A quick check indicates that in 1971 (the approximate date of their study), aluminum production was 10,300,000 metric tons.  By 2000 (last date of reliable figures), aluminum production was 24,000,000 metric tons.  

They predicted that silver would be all gone either by 1984 (worst case), or by 1987 (best case).  Here are the following figures:

World silver production
1971   9,170 metric tons
1984   13,100
1987   14,000
2002   20,000

One of their most severe predictions was for gold.  Under the best case scenario, gold would be depleted by 1982.  Under their worst case scenario (exponential growth) gold would be gone by 1980.

World gold production
1971    1450 metric tons
1980    1220 metric tons (uh oh, we're running out!)
1982    1340 metric tons (okay, maybe not)
2002    2550 metric tons (huh?)


(Okay, now I realize that I'm not comparing apples and apples here, rather fruit and fruit.  The Limits to Growth study was predicting that all reserves of a particular resource would be gone by a certain year, they were not predicting production figures.  But production is of course linked to the reserves--if reserves are all gone, then there can be no production.  The fact that production in the year that they predicted _depletion_ is actually greater than it was in 1971 when they made the prediction implies that there were some major problems with their model.  If we are supposed to be out of aluminum by now, but we are producing MORE of it than we were when they made the prediction, then, well, they were wrong.)

In fact, this belief that mineral resources were all on the verge of depletion prompted a rather famous 1980 bet between economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich:

http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/People/julian_simon.html

Simon bet Ehrlich that mineral costs in 1990 would be cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars than they were in 1980.  In other words, the minerals would be more scarce, hence more expensive.  He allowed Ehrlich (a doom and gloom guy) to pick any five minerals.  Ehrlich picked: copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten.  Short story, Ehrlich lost the bet and mailed Simon a check.

Now as Wingo says in his book, "The fact that these resources have not been depleted is a testament to industrial creativity in finding substitutes or transcending the limits estimated in 1971 as well as the difficulty of modeling something as complex as an entire civilization."  I would add to that the limits of estimating even basic resources, particularly when it comes to estimated reserves (which is something that Wingo goes into in detail when discussing petroleum).

However, the basic argument underneath the Limits to Growth study was essentially sound--some materials are finite _on earth_ (emphasis added because it is the crux of the entire space advocacy debate).  We _will_ run out of petroleum.  The question is when.  The next question is what we should do about that.


>They didn't ignore technological
optimism, they just pointed out that it doesn't solve the long-term problem of
growth producing ever-increasing demands on finite resources, no matter how
increasingly well those resources were used.

Actually, no.  They were _negative_ about "technological optimism."  They claimed that technology could _not_ be the solution to the looming catastrophe.  In fact, they refer to "faith in technology" rather than technology itself, which indicates their dismissiveness toward the subject.

And this is also ignoring the fact that not only were they predicting doom, they were also prescribing a solution.  Their solution was pretty darned scary (mandatory population control starting in 1975, severe constraints on economic growth, etc.).  Put simply, they wanted to slam the brakes on human development starting in 1975 and condemn the world to a bleak future, which they argued was less bleak than the future that it was going to face anyway.


>A vital thing that you yourself have ignored is that studies like Limits to
Growth are themselves part of the equation. 

Hey, I was reviewing a book.  Obviously I touched a nerve with you, which is why you called me a doofus.  But I'll still stand by my depiction of the Limits to Growth study as deeply flawed.  The fact that we have not run out of any of the minerals that they claimed we would run out of by now--even in their best case scenario--indicates that they had some serious modeling problems.


>Rather than being the useless
rankings of "doomsday cultists", they significantly influence decision making
which in turn influences our ever evolving situation: they are part of the
experiment. 

The Limits to Growth study was pretty close to scientific doomsday cultism.  And I somehow doubt that their study actually influenced world gold production, or silver production, or aluminum production.  Actually, I would bet that the production of these minerals increased because of the thing that they were so dismissive of--technology.  In fact, it is technology that also leads to resource substitution as well.  After all, petroleum extraction and refining is a technology that replaced horses.

And if you think it is hard to model things like resource reserves, then try modeling technological impact on society.  It's not easy.  Actually, it's pretty nigh impossible.  Anybody familiar with a little world history knows that Bangladesh was starving in the 1960s.  But because of technology (the agro revolution) today Bangladesh actually exports food.  That's a case where technology solved a fundamental resource problem.


>One reason that population growth, for example, has not continued
as before is because decision-makers, from the high to the low, took notice of
these arguments and ones like them. 

Okay, explain the reduction in birth rates in Europe and connect them to these studies.

Actually, population growth reduced for both economic and technological reasons, not because some people at MIT studied the issue.  It turns out that the best way to reduce the birth rate is to industrialize.  Industrialization (and education) decreases the value of having children.  They can no longer help out on the farm, so people have less of them.  Italy's low birth rate, for instance, cannot be explained by decision-makers reading The Limits to Growth.  Now China is a different matter, but I would bet you that Chinese birth rates in industrialized areas are dropping rapidly.


>The influence of these studies has also
resulted in cleverer use of resources, (recycling, reducing pollution, less
wasteful processes etc.), better long-term planning and so on.  The world-wide
Green movement, which has had considerable influence over social & industrial
processes, is another result.

Yep.  But I wasn't discussing _other_ studies.  I was discussing The Limits to Growth study.  And I wasn't bashing environmentalism or recycling or anything like that.  It's pretty clear that The Limits to Growth study had some serious flaws.  Apparently there is now a third version of this, released in 2004 (the 1972 version was revised in 1992), and it might be amusing to see how they explain the fact that we have not yet run out of any of the minerals that they predicted we would run out of by now.  I imagine that they are going to keep warning of Armageddon until they finally die.  But, once again, I was simply reviewing a book here, one that I think has a lot of relevance to the space activist movement.




DDAY